Modernisms 1900-1980
Brought to you by Smarthistory. This is the era of "isms"—Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and more. The avant-garde is unleashed in the 20th century and explores both abstraction and representation as a means to "represent" the radical changes, violence, alienation, and beauty that characterize the century.
15 units290 videos26 hours
Learn it live with a class on Puzzicle · Teachers: use it with your class
Unit 1: A beginner's guide to 20th century art
Unit 2: Fauvism and Expressionism
Fauvism and Matisse
Expressionism
Kirchner, Street, Dresden ✓ Check-ins9:55
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Street, Berlin" ✓ Check-ins2:21
Emil Nolde, "Young Couple," 1913 ✓ Check-ins2:16
Jawlensky, Young Girl in a Flowered Hat ✓ Check-ins4:21
Schiele, Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait) ✓ Check-ins3:00
Nazi looting: Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally ✓ Check-ins8:29
Schiele, Hermits ✓ Check-ins3:56
Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912 ✓ Check-ins5:15
Vasily Kandinsky, "Klänge (Sounds)" ✓ Check-ins2:13
Unit 3: Cubism and early abstraction
Cubism
The Case for Abstraction ✓ Check-ins9:19
Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein ✓ Check-ins4:49
Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon ✓ Check-ins5:57
Pablo Picasso and the new language of Cubism ✓ Check-ins4:48
Braque, The Viaduct at L'Estaque ✓ Check-ins3:51
Picasso, The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro ✓ Check-ins4:15
Picasso, Guitar ✓ Check-ins4:17
Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning ✓ Check-ins6:36
Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Glass, and Bottle ✓ Check-ins2:09
Conservation | Picasso's Guitars ✓ Check-ins3:17
Pablo Picasso, Guernica ✓ Check-ins17:05
Fernand Léger, "Contrast of Forms" ✓ Check-ins2:20
Robert Delaunay, "Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon" ✓ Check-ins2:01
The art of the Russian avant-garde
The School of Paris
Photography in the early 20th century
Unit 4: Italian art before WWI
Unit 5: Dada and Surrealism
Dada
Marcel Duchamp, The Large Glass ✓ Check-ins7:28
Art as concept: Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm ✓ Check-ins10:08
Duchamp, Fountain ✓ Check-ins3:12
Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages ✓ Check-ins2:29
Duchamp, Boite-en-valise (the red box), series F ✓ Check-ins5:00
Max Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale ✓ Check-ins5:52
Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany ✓ Check-ins4:53
Hausmann, Spirit of the Age: Mechanical Head ✓ Check-ins5:00
Surrealism
The Case for Surrealism ✓ Check-ins10:18
Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) ✓ Check-ins3:41
Conservation | René Magritte, "The Portrait," 1935 ✓ Check-ins2:59
Dali, The Persistence of Memory ✓ Check-ins6:28
Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus ✓ Check-ins4:08
Giacometti, The Palace at 4am ✓ Check-ins3:28
Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon) ✓ Check-ins3:20
Giorgio de Chirico, "The Anxious Journey" ✓ Check-ins2:39
Room: 1930s ✓ Check-ins3:00
Room: 1940s ✓ Check-ins2:29
Unit 6: German & Italian art between the wars
Prints and photography
Bauhaus
New Objectivity
Nazi & Fascist visual culture
Unit 7: Latin American Modernism
Early vanguards
Mexican muralism
Surrealism in Latin America
Unit 8: American art to WWII
American Impressionism
Symbolism
Ashcan
291
The first modern photograph? Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage ✓ Check-ins5:37
Florine Stettheimer, Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz ✓ Check-ins6:34
The City at night, Joseph Stella's The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted ✓ Check-ins6:40
Georgia O'Keeffe, Radiator Building—Night, New York ✓ Check-ins4:58
O'Keeffe, The Lawrence Tree ✓ Check-ins2:36
Georgia O'Keeffe, A Piece of Wood II/From Knot of Wood ✓ Check-ins4:08
North American Modernism
The American west
The American south and southwest
Harlem Renaissance
Social Realism
Strange Worlds, immigration in the early 20th century ✓ Check-ins5:05
Hale Woodruff, The Banjo Player ✓ Check-ins4:47
Grant Wood, American Gothic ✓ Check-ins6:20
Alexandre Hogue, Crucified Land ✓ Check-ins5:28
Revisiting the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree ✓ Check-ins6:25
Vertis Hayes, The Lynchers ✓ Check-ins4:42
Vertis Hayes, Juke Joint ✓ Check-ins5:14
Cheap Thrills: Coney Island during the Great Depression ✓ Check-ins5:10
Ben Shahn, Contemporary American Sculpture ✓ Check-ins3:35
A mine disaster and those left behind: Ben Shahn's Miner's Wives ✓ Check-ins5:09
Romare Bearden, Factory Workers ✓ Check-ins5:47
Hopper, Nighthawks ✓ Check-ins4:48
Horace Pippin's Mr. Prejudice ✓ Check-ins5:33
Horace Pippin, Holy Mountain, I ✓ Check-ins5:48
Josiah McElheny on Horace Pippin ✓ Check-ins3:29
Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter ✓ Check-ins7:16
Eldzier Cortor, Southern Landscape ✓ Check-ins4:17
American sculpture before WWII
Unit 9: Post-War American art
Abstract Expressionism
Finding meaning in abstraction ✓ Check-ins4:52
Norman Lewis, Untitled ✓ Check-ins4:23
Norman Lewis, Untitled (Subway Station) ✓ Check-ins5:57
de Kooning, Woman I ✓ Check-ins3:40
How to paint like Willem de Kooning ✓ Check-ins19:50
How to paint like Willem de Kooning - Part 2 ✓ Check-ins30:00
Willem de Kooning, Woman, I (from MoMA) ✓ Check-ins1:46
Barnett Newman ✓ Check-ins4:32
Newman's Onement I, 1948 ✓ Check-ins4:53
The Painting Techniques of Barnett Newman ✓ Check-ins3:50
Restoring Rothko ✓ Check-ins17:27
Why is that important? Looking at Jackson Pollock ✓ Check-ins12:18
Representation and abstraction: Millais's Ophelia and Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis ✓ Check-ins8:30
The Case For Mark Rothko4:21
Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange) ✓ Check-ins4:23
Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13 ✓ Check-ins5:12
The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko ✓ Check-ins3:33
The Painting Techniques of Jackson Pollock ✓ Check-ins4:02
The Case for Jackson Pollock11:16
Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) ✓ Check-ins6:49
Paint Application Studies of Jackson Pollock's Mural ✓ Check-ins1:59
"One: Number 31, 1950" by Jackson Pollock, 1950 | MoMA Education ✓ Check-ins2:16
Lee Krasner, Re-Echo5:30
Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57 ✓ Check-ins4:01
Franz Kline ✓ Check-ins3:11
The Painting Techniques of Franz Kline ✓ Check-ins3:55
Conrad Marca-Relli, Cristobal ✓ Check-ins5:25
Tony Smith, Die ✓ Check-ins5:06
Hedda Sterne, Number 3—1957 ✓ Check-ins5:14
"Low Water” by Joan Mitchell ✓ Check-ins6:43
Beauford Delaney's portrait of Marian Anderson ✓ Check-ins5:11
New York School
Sari Dienes, Star Circle ✓ Check-ins4:57
Jasper Johns, Flag ✓ Check-ins6:05
Johns, White Flag ✓ Check-ins2:47
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed ✓ Check-ins4:49
Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz Useful Art #5: The Western Hotel, 1992 ✓ Check-ins5:43
Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting ✓ Check-ins4:35
Ad Reinhardt ✓ Check-ins3:24
The Painting Techniques of Ad Reinhardt ✓ Check-ins4:59
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea ✓ Check-ins4:30
“Protractor, Variation I” by Frank Stella ✓ Check-ins7:04
Postwar figurative art
Archibald John Motley Jr., Bronzeville at Night ✓ Check-ins5:21
Harlem 1948, Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks and the photo essay ✓ Check-ins7:38
Thelma Streat, Girl with Bird ✓ Check-ins3:41
Charles Sebree, The Mystic ✓ Check-ins3:46
Cars, highways, and isolation in Postwar America ✓ Check-ins5:03
Hughie Lee-Smith, The Walls ✓ Check-ins6:15
Identity and civil rights in 1960s America ✓ Check-ins6:12- A mine disaster and those left behind: Ben Shahn's Miner's Wives ✓ Check-ins5:09
Romare Bearden, Three Folk Musicians ✓ Check-ins4:05
Brummett Echohawk, An Island of Redbuds on the Cimarron ✓ Check-ins5:14
Emory Douglas, The Black Panther: All Power to the People ✓ Check-ins6:19
Billy "War Soldier" Soza, The Wind Only I Am Afraid Of ✓ Check-ins5:46
Marcos Dimas, Lolita Lebrón: Puerto Rican Freedom Fighter5:42
Nitza Tufiño, Pareja Taína ✓ Check-ins4:29
Postwar abstract art
Isamu Noguchi, Gregory (Effigy) ✓ Check-ins5:36
From wire to weightlessness: Ruth Asawa, Untitled ✓ Check-ins4:45
Lee Bontecou, Untitled (No. 25) ✓ Check-ins7:08
Rita Letendre, Menace (Ramat Gan) ✓ Check-ins4:40
Alma Thomas, Lunar Rendezvous—Circle of Flowers ✓ Check-ins4:03
“Trane” by William T. Williams7:41
Joe Overstreet, Boxes ✓ Check-ins5:42
Fritz Scholder, Indian Rug #5 ✓ Check-ins4:56
Gee's bend, quilting over generations ✓ Check-ins4:36
Sam Gilliam, Purpled (Chasers Series) ✓ Check-ins4:58
Minimalism and Earthworks
The Case for Minimalism ✓ Check-ins4:38
Robert Morris: Bodyspacemotionthings at Tate Modern ✓ Check-ins3:32
Donald Judd, Untitled ✓ Check-ins3:50
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty ✓ Check-ins6:51
Alice Aycock, Low Building with Dirt Roof (For Mary) ✓ Check-ins5:08
The Case for Land Art9:29
Dorothea Rockburne: Drawing Which Makes Itself ✓ Check-ins3:56
Richard Serra, "Intersection II" ✓ Check-ins3:38
Richard Serra, "Torqued Ellipse IV" ✓ Check-ins3:11
Richard Serra, "Band," 2006 ✓ Check-ins2:22
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial ✓ Check-ins7:13
James Turrell, Skyspace, The Way of Color ✓ Check-ins4:41
Unit 10: Post-War European art
Postwar art in Switzerland
Postwar art in Germany
Postwar art in Britain
Barbara Hepworth: Pioneering modern sculpture ✓ Check-ins3:52
Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos ✓ Check-ins5:51
Room: Henry Moore ✓ Check-ins5:12
Describing what you see: Sculpture (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure) ✓ Check-ins6:33
Bacon, Triptych - August 1972 ✓ Check-ins5:24
Freud, Standing by the Rags ✓ Check-ins3:45- Room: 1940s ✓ Check-ins2:29
Room: 1950s ✓ Check-ins2:25
Room: 1960s ✓ Check-ins3:34
The Berlin Wall and industrial England: Don McCullin's conflict photography ✓ Check-ins4:17
Unit 11: Pop art
American and European Pop art
Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America ✓ Check-ins5:23
Why is this art? Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans ✓ Check-ins7:10
The Case For Andy Warhol3:44
Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe ✓ Check-ins3:15
Fashion and alienation in 1960s New York, Marisol's The Party ✓ Check-ins5:04
Oldenburg, Floor Cake ✓ Check-ins3:30
James Rosenquist, "F-111," 1964-65 ✓ Check-ins1:43
Roy Lichtenstein, Look Mickey ✓ Check-ins9:08
Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral Set V ✓ Check-ins3:10
Harry Fonseca, Two Coyotes with Flags ✓ Check-ins5:01
Unit 12: Conceptual and performance art
Conceptual art
The Case for Yoko Ono ✓ Check-ins6:50
John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art ✓ Check-ins3:35
Hans Haacke: "A Breed Apart" in South Africa ✓ Check-ins3:05
Hans Haacke, Seurat's 'Les Poseuses' (small version) ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip6:38
Preserving Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway ✓ Check-ins5:51
Jannis Kounellis, "Da inventare sul posto (To invent on the spot)" ✓ Check-ins1:49
Juan Downey: Plato Now ✓ Check-ins3:36
Cildo Meireles ✓ Check-ins5:10
Yayoi Kusama ✓ Check-ins7:24
How to paint like Yayoi Kusama ✓ Check-ins20:08
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Dancing into the Universe ✓ Check-ins5:16
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin5:31
Performance art
The Case for Performance Art9:10
Marina Abramović: The Body as medium ✓ Check-ins1:40
Marina Abramović: What is performance art? ✓ Check-ins1:56
Marina Abramović ✓ Check-ins2:16
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Cleaning the museum—maintenance art ✓ Check-ins5:49
Vito Acconci ✓ Check-ins4:39
Unlock Art: Frank Skinner on Performance Art ✓ Check-ins5:57
Unit 13: Post-Minimalism
Sculpture
Hesse, Untitled ✓ Check-ins3:41
Hesse, Untitled (Rope Piece) ✓ Check-ins3:46
The last work of Eva Hesse ✓ Check-ins5:26
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party ✓ Check-ins7:33
Barbara Zucker, Mix, Stir, Pour (White Floor Piece)4:57
Barbara Zucker, Time Signatures: Homage to Linda and Lucy. My Luminaries5:33
Winsor, #1 Rope ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip3:14
Unit 14: Colonial and postcolonial modernisms
Cuba
Ethiopia
Mexico
Unit 15: Architecture, design, and dance
New York skyscrapers & landmarks
International style
American design
Late Modernism/Post-Modernism
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